As integrated circuit (IC) dice become more densely packed with circuit components and operating frequencies increase, power consumption of these ICs increases. Increased power consumption results in increased operating temperature, which if not controlled can cause catastrophic failure of the IC.
Prior thermal solutions include heat sinks, liquid cooling, fans, etc. Conventional power management includes reduced operating frequency, and shutting down of a clock signal for a period of time, etc. Combination of thermal solutions and power management often allows an IC to operate within an acceptable thermal range.
Some conventional methods use a thermal sensor to detect whether a temperature of an IC exceeds a temperature threshold. A typical conventional approach is to use a chip reset to disable the thermal sensor. That is, when the chip is in reset, the thermal sensor output is disabled. However, chip reset often is a high power state. As a result, an extended amount of time in reset may cause overheating. Therefore, if the thermal sensor is disabled during reset, this overheating may rapidly become destructive, leading to destruction of the chip and possibly the motherboard and even becoming a fire hazard.